Gaining access to uncommon features and retraining

[Feragore]

Reading a discussion about retraining posed an interesting question I've not really seen challenged.

Many adventure paths have special archetypes you may gain access to over the course of the campaign, often as a reward. Some of these can appear quite late, but unless it's at level 2, players have already made build choices, so they might need to retrain.

However, the rules on retraining state:

Quote:

When retraining, you generally can’t make choices you couldn’t make when you selected the original option. For instance, you can’t exchange a 2nd-level skill feat for a 4th-level one, or for one that requires prerequisites you didn’t meet at the time you took the original feat. If you don’t remember whether you met the prerequisites at the time, ask your GM to make the call.

To me this seems as written a character who obtains access is not able to retrain to that dedication and subsequent feats. Access is a prerequisite that wasn't met when they were level 2, 4, or 6, even if now they have it available to them.

But that also means that those archetypes can't reliably be bought into. A campaign might even be over before you get past the dedication feat and you have to start over instead of taking stronger high level feats as some rely on the lower level ones.

Also, if the archetype was made access by a particular person or faction, what happens when that person or faction no longer exists or is on the other side of Golarion?

I would assume this would also prevent retraining as they couldn't find a suitable expert to retrain with, but would PCs even be able to learn those uncommon feats without their mentor when leveling?

How would you rule these?

[Errenor]

Plot questions are solved by a GM. Rules on retraining are about pure mechanics of the game and access is not requirement or prerequisite. So if you (all) can make this sensible (or willing to let it go) and your char has a retraining opportunity you can retrain for options to which you've got an access only recently.

[Captain Morgan]

Worth noting access is NOT a prerequisite. It is not a hard coded rule. Access simply means you can select an option without getting permission from your GM. But with permission it can be ignored entirely.

[YuriP]

Typically campaigns that give access to certain specific archetypes have an NPC teacher to teach them. This same NPC can be used to retrain feats that you want to exchange for those of the archetype.

[Finoan]

I agree with the others. The rule on retraining is regarding the listed prerequisites of the feats, not the access requirements.

So if the campaign is level 8 when you get access to an archetype that has a level 2 dedication feat, I would have no problem with using retraining to put the dedication feat in as your level 2 feat slot. As long as you meet the other requirements of the dedication feat with just your level 2 build options chosen.

The retraining rule is to prevent shenanigans like a player going, "I don't want to give up Toughness as my level 3 general feat or Fleet as my level 7 general feat, but now that I have Shield Block as my level 11 general feat I'm going to retrain Lastwall Sentry in my level 2 class feat slot."

But gaining access to Lastwall Sentry (finding and becoming a member of the Knights of Lastwall) at level 11 and shuffling the general feats around to have Shield Block in the level 3 general feat slot would mean that the level 11 character could retrain Lastwall Sentry into the level 4 class feat slot.